I WAS 11, going on 12, when England lost to Germany at Italia 90.

I was football obsessed – Panini swaps bundled in an elastic band in my school bag every day, Esso’s World Cup coin collection testing my parents’ patience to the limit – and hadn’t even contemplated the possibility that England might not win the World Cup.

I remember swearing in the living room when Chris Waddle blazed his penalty over the bar, a move that got me sent to my room in tears even though my dad was equally furious.

By the summer of Euro 96, I was 18.

Football was coming home, Britpop haircuts were ubiquitous, and I’d just finished my A-levels so was footloose and fancy free.

Watching a major tournament while drinking in a pub was a major novelty, and with flags of St George fluttering from every car window, a group of us booked an end-of-school trip to Newquay to coincide with the weekend of the final.

It was going to be sun, sea and cider. It still was, but it wasn’t quite the same watching Germany and the Czech Republic.

By 2010, I had got my job as a sports journalist and was sitting in the press seats in Bloemfontein as England and Germany locked horns again.

It had been a South African adventure, and for all that Fabio Capello’s side had limped through the group stage, again, I hadn’t really considered the possibility that things were about to go wrong. By the end of the evening, I was back in my hotel bar, drinking with a group of celebrating Germans, desperately trying to book myself onto the next available flight to Heathrow.

They say that life is measured in memorable moments. Usually, that is taken to mean Christmases, birthdays, weddings, family celebrations. I can remember plenty of them, but couldn’t really tell you when they happened. But Michael Owen’s goal against Argentina? France 1998.

I watched it with a group of old schoolfriends in the top house at Witton-le-Wear. England winning 5-1 in Munich? September 2001. I was working in Leeds at the time and watched the game in The Three Horseshoes in Headingley. England beating Sweden in the quarter-finals of the last World Cup in Russia? It was my 40th birthday and my wife had got me a trip to New York completely oblivious to the fact that the World Cup would be taking place. At 6am, we were drinking Budweiser in a sports bar in Battery Park.

They’re the moments I’ve tended to measure my life by, and whatever happens tonight, there is every chance that England’s latest knockout meeting with Germany will carve out a new place in my footballing memory bank.

Win, lose or, heaven help us, draw, this will be another of ‘those matches’, the games that tell the story of a nation.

Is it destined to be another disappointment? Let’s be honest, there’s every chance. England first took part in the European Championships in 1968, losing to Yugoslavia, and since then, they have won the grand total of one knockout match at the Euros. Even that, against Spain in 1996, was a streaky victory, with the Spaniards having a perfectly good goal disallowed for offside before England squeaked through on penalties.

England’s last competitive victory over Germany at Wembley came in the 1970s, and while Gareth Southgate’s side are yet to concede a goal at this summer’s tournament, they haven’t exactly set the world alight in their opening three games.

And yet, this being football, and this being England, you just never know.

Playing at Wembley has to help, and there is certainly plenty of talent in the squad.

This doesn’t look a vintage German side, and they were within six minutes of crashing out at the group stage before scrambling a draw with Hungary.

Defensive resolve tends to count for a fair bit in the knockout rounds, and England look solid at the back. They’ve even won their last two penalty shoot-outs.

There it is again, that tingle of excitement.

It was there in 1990, watching in my parents’ front room, there in 1996, jumping around with my mates, and will be present again this evening at Wembley. Nights like this don’t come around too often.

But whatever happens, you’ll remember them forever.